


Transformation Magic

by Ember_Keelty



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-27
Updated: 2010-11-27
Packaged: 2017-10-13 10:30:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/136268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ember_Keelty/pseuds/Ember_Keelty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of Lisanna's death, Mirajane readjusts her relationship to her magic — and her relationship to Erza.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transformation Magic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KayAlpha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KayAlpha/gifts).



            Mirajane had always been the sort to cry with her fists.  When there was work to be done, she would channel every last drop of adolescent turmoil into a battle rage that could sweep through a small army and in a matter of minutes reduce to a crumpled heap of broken bones and bruised-black flesh anyone stupid enough not to immediately fall to their knees and surrender.  When there were no jobs for her, she could always just grab a fistful of Erza Scarlet's horrid garish hair and _yank_ , and soon the beast spirits in her breast would be howling too loudly at the smell of blood and touch of pain for whatever drama had been eating her to even register anymore.

            This hurt was different.  She couldn't throw punches when all the strength in her body had leaked out through tears that would not be denied.  She couldn't lose herself to the beasts when they were the source of the problem.  Even so, she could feel them scratching with dagger-sharp claws at the doors of her grief-ravaged consciousness.

            "No, I will not let you out," she said sternly into the mirror.  "Your friends have done quite enough damage already."  She was sitting at Lisanna's vanity, and had been for longer than she had bothered to keep track of.  As she looked herself over she saw that there was still something a bit animal to her hair, something feral and mammalian, so she took up the brush once again to try to smooth it out and make it look more distinctly human.  A part of her would have liked to grab the scissors and simply hack it off, but Lisanna had worn her hair short, and Mirajane did not want to deal with her heart skipping beats whenever she happened to catch her reflection out of the corner of her eye.

            The door slammed open with a _bang_ that made her jump in her seat then, no sooner than she'd recovered, fall almost into a panic at the thought that the impact with the wall might have damaged Lisanna's room.  "Be careful!" she squeaked — _squeaked_ , like a _mouse_! — at her visitor, a tall girl with unmistakably wild, fox-red hair.

            "Fight me, Mirajane," Erza growled.

            "You sound like Natsu."  Mirajane did not turn away from her mirror.  The two of them could see each other perfectly well just like this.

            "You have ten seconds to make the first move," Erza told her.

            Mirajane waited.  True to her word, the other girl summoned a sword to her hand and, with a swing and shout, lunged for her.

            It was strange, Mirajane thought:  so many times this had happened before, and every last one of them had gotten her flying high on adrenaline and often on literal wings.  This time, however, her heart did not race.  If anything, it almost stopped.  Though her flesh felt like glass and the magic coursing beneath it like fire, and just minutes ago she would have believed that the slightest disturbance could explode her into millions of red-hot and talon-sharp shards, upon being tested she found herself perfectly cool and in control, aside from a small spike of fear.  In the mirror she could see her own eyes widen, her mouth fall open, her whole face soften into something unrecognizable as the hard-edged demon she was so used to seeing looking back at her in the gleam of her enemies' armor.  It was a strangely pleasant surprise — more pleasant, certainly, than her rival bursting into her dead sister's room — and, in her opinion just at that moment, very much worth losing her head.

            But, of course, she didn’t lose it; the sword mage's blade stopped right at the skin on her neck, then dissolved into a billow of steam.  Mirajane watched a cleanly severed clump of hair fall to the foot of the vanity before turning in her seat to face Erza, whose expression was priceless.  She returned the horrified grimace and wide-eyed stare with a small, sweet smile that bared no teeth.  It was a smile that belonged to someone else, a smile that felt as borrowed as the claws and fangs and feathers she used to invoke with her magic.  "Well, Erza, it looks like you've won!" she singsonged.  "There's no way I could do _that_ with Take Over."  She didn't realize until after the joke had left her lips that she was actually sincerely envious.  If she were a knight and not an animal, if her magic were rooted in discipline rather than chaos, if she could stop on a coin like Erza could, she would not be having this crisis.  And if all that were true for Elfman as well…

            "Do you have a death wish?" Erza hissed at her, cutting off the cascade of might-have-beens.

            "Of course not," she said.  "I can't very well leave my brother all on his own, now can I?"

            Whatever had Erza so on edge, that seemed to defuse it.  She unfixed her glare from Mirajane to look around, apparently taking in all the bright pastels and animal shapes so characteristic of a little girl's living space, and wincing visibly as she did so.  "Elfman tells me you haven't left this room for four days."

            "Well, you know," Mirajane said, gesturing at the mirror, "I have to look my best!"

            "Elfman tells me that every time he brings you food, you're sitting there brushing your hair."  _So that joke isn't funny_ , she did not need to say.  "He also tells me you told him that you aren't going to fight anymore."

            "That boy sure is talkative!" Mirajane observed.

            Erza bristled again.  "How could you say something like that?"

            "I said what I meant," Mirajane told her.  Then, before the other girl had a chance to respond, she added, "Can I ask you something?  When you realized I wasn't going to defend myself — that you were a hair's breadth away from _murdering_ someone, and I wasn't about to lift a finger to stop you — did you feel scared?"

            "Not scared enough to bottle up my magic forever!"  Erza reached tentatively forward like she meant to clap a hand on Mirajane's shoulder, but apparently thought better of it at the last moment.  "Mirajane, your power—"

            "—is a gift," she interrupted.  "It's part of who I am, and it makes me special, and I shouldn't be afraid of it because it's there for doing good.  Erza, I _know_.  I know that’s what I'm supposed to believe.  But I don't believe it, and I don't want to, and I _can't_.  Could you, if she were your sister?  If he were your brother?"

            "Elfman hasn't given up," she said instead of answering the question.  "If he can keep going after what happened, then so can you."

            "Elfman feels like he has something to prove.  I don't.  His way of coping is his, and mine is mine."

            "Do you call _this_ coping?" Erza demanded, indicating the confines of the room with a broad sweep of her arm.

            "I would have thought you'd be happy," Mirajane said, because Erza's gesturing had directed her gaze to the stuffed animals still sitting on Lisanna's bed, and if she did not take the offensive, she was going to start crying again.  There was no way she was crying in front of Erza.  "You're the strongest girl in Fairy Tail now."

            _I already was_ , Mirajane expected her to retort.  Instead she asked, in a tone of simmering irritation just on the verge of boiling over into fury, "Why do people keep saying things like that?  Why would anyone think that I care about being the strongest _girl_?"

            "Maybe because I used to," Mirajane admitted.  Hadn't that been what their whole rivalry was about?

            "This is why I can't stand you."  Erza massaged her forehead with the heel of her palm — rather theatrically, Mirajane thought, as though for the sole purpose of conveying, _You're giving me a headache_.  "It's a pointless distinction, and it makes it sound like we aren't both stronger than most of the boys as well."

            All the bloodthirsty things Mirajane had inside wanted to grin at that, but she kept her smile soft, just to spite them.  "Well, it may be pointless, but it's also yours," she said, drawing the silly, lightly teasing tone from the same place as the smile.  A part of her wondered whether she really ought be doing that, but she needed a source of strength that wasn't the beasts, and she could think of nothing else.  "They should call you Titania!  All hail the queen of the Fairies!"

            One crossguard-calloused hand shot out to grab her by the collar and lift her off of her feet, and the other pulled back into a fist.  Mirajane just hung limply, not breaking eye contact, and after a moment Erza went from looking enraged to confused, and then to abashed.  She set her down without striking, and it suddenly occurred to Mirajane that being a civilian woman might very well mean that Erza was never going to hit her again.  There was absolutely no reason why that should make her feel as wistful as it did.

            Then suddenly there was an arm around her neck, and another around her waist, and she was pulled forward so sharply that she nearly broke her nose on Erza's breastplate.  _Ah, now this makes more sense,_ Mirajane thought with not a little relief.   _She's just decided to strangle me instead._ But that theory was dispelled when her rival buried her face in the crook between Mirajane's shoulder and throat.

            "Please don't go away," Erza said quietly.  "Come back to me, Mirajane."

            "I'm right here, you crazy girl!"  By twisting in just the right way, Mirajane found she could get the pressure off of her neck, but there was no respite for the small of her back, and if Erza tightened the vice any more, she felt like her spine would snap in half.  Was her normal human body really this fragile?

            "I don't like it when people change."  There was something odd about her voice, and a moment later Mirajane was distracted from her discomfort by the realization that her shoulder was getting wet.

            "Hey," she said.  "Don't cry, Erza.  What would—"  She stumbled over a catch in her throat, and noticed that her own eyes were starting to sting.  After a few seconds of trying to fight it, she gave in and let her own tears flow.  Damn that girl for always attacking from the most unexpected angle; if this was a feint, Mirajane was going to kill her, vow of pacifism or none.  "What would become of the boys if _both_ their demon women suddenly turned into weak, weepy little girls?"

            "No.  That's not it."  Erza loosened her grip a bit.  Mirajane ceased squirming, deciding that being embraced by her archenemy wasn't so bad when she didn't have to struggle against asphyxiation.  The breastplate was still hard and cold and not particularly nice to be pressed up against, though, and not for the first time Mirajane wondered why, since Erza's magic meant she did not have to worry about being caught unprepared, she never seemed to take it off.  "I'm such a hypocrite.  There's nothing weak about crying.  You're as strong as you ever were, Mirajane.  How you use that strength is your choice and no one else's.  If what you have to do to keep going is give something up, even something so important, then let it go, for now.  As long as you keep breathing, maybe someday…"

            "I don't want to think about 'someday!'" Mirajane sobbed.  "All the somedays in the world can come and go, and Lisanna will still be dead.  And her room will get dusty, and I'll have to pack up all her dresses and dolls and put them away, and no matter what we set up here instead it will be all wrong, so we'll probably just end up leaving it like this, with her bed and her wardrobe and her vanity just sitting here waiting for her to come home.  I want her to come home, Erza.  She's never been gone for a whole week before.  How can she be gone forever?"

            Erza said nothing, probably because she knew there was nothing to say.  She just held her until the tears stopped, then pulled away to arm's length and looked her over with concern.

            "I'm okay," Mirajane lied through her sister's smile.

            "You will be," Erza promised.  "Even if you never fight again, you'll be okay, and you'll still be a member of Fairy Tail."  She paused, and cast a glance at the hairbrush lying on the vanity.  "You do have to come out of this room, though."

            "Does it have to be right now?"

            "Yes, it does," said Erza with all her accustomed authority.  "We're going to take just a short walk.  You can come right back afterwards."

            "I'm not sure I trust your idea of 'a short walk,'" Mirajane told her, because when Erza said a phrase like that, there was no guarantee it didn't actually mean scaling the nearest mountain or running laps around the perimeter of Magnolia.

            "We're going to take a thirty-minute walk to the guild building and back," Erza clarified.  "You don't have to go in when we get there, but if you don't come willingly I will sling you over my shoulder and carry you."

            "You wouldn't," Mirajane said with a pout that was only half affected.  "How could you traumatize a grieving—"  But this was Erza she was talking about; she would, and she could, and she was already wrapping an arm around Mirajane's waist again and hoisting her up.  "Kya!  Fine, I'll go with you, just put me down!"

            "I thought as much," Erza said, and set her back on her feet.

            As her rival turned to leave, Mirajane stole one last glance in the mirror and was reminded that her hair had been mutilated at the beginning of their encounter.  A bit apprehensively, she ran a hand over it, and instantly it was made whole.  Emboldened, she closed her eyes, focused, and opened them again to find her face and all its features just ever so slightly softer and rounder, and her hair thin and flat and well-behaved. It did not require Take Over, so, she decided, she could do that.  There was more than one kind of transformation magic, and she was a master of all of them.

            "Don't make me come back for you," Erza called from the hall, and with a startled squeak Mirajane ran to meet her.  In her hurry, she neglected to close the door behind her.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Transformation Magic [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5787937) by [Opalsong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opalsong/pseuds/Opalsong)




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